Security firm RSA was bribed by NSA

The bad news surrounding the government of the United States and in particular the NSA (National Security Agency) just keep piling up. After so many of the backstage shenanigans of the NSA have been revealed, one would think that their secrets would pretty much be known by this point. However, that is obviously not the case here.

According to a report by Reuters, the US security firm RSA received 10$ million from the NSA in order to create an intentional encryption flaw that the NSA could use to monitor the user data. Although the documents revealed by Edward Snowden had already shown that the NSA knew about the backdoor, it was previously unknown that the RSA had done it willingly and was actually bribed for it.

These news bring up the discussion of how many more secrets the NSA has. There are hundreds of security companies out there and we have no idea the extent to the agency’s surveillance tactics. It is obviously more concerning when you think that similar encryption and security algorithms are used by all the major tech companies like Microsoft, Google and more. Simple promises to customers about transparency are not enough anymore. The RSA had previously stated that customer experience and trust was on top of their list but that obviously did not stop them from receiving a bribe in order to compromise the data their customers entrusted in them.